Google Search: The Asterisk Wildcard and Punctuation

Think you know all there is to know about Google search? I was recently asked a question regarding the use of the asterisk when searching on Google, specifically in conjunction with certain punctuation. This person was under the impression that if you used the equal sign on either side of an asterisk when searching Google, it would function as a multiple word wildcard operator. For example, searching … Read More

How to Bulk-Accept LinkedIn Invitations to Connect

LinkedIn has been making changes to their interface and one thing I noticed back in March is that I could no longer select multiple invitations to connect and accept them all at once from the main inbox page. It took a little bit of exploring the new inbox interface and functionality before I figured out how to be able to bulk … Read More

Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook July 2009 Traffic Data

I’m always interested in the traffic for the “Big Three” social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn), and I discovered today that  www.compete.com just released July’s data.  And here it is! Facebook While Facebook’s been on a tear of growth as it passed the 250M member mark, Facebook only added 117,142 unique U.S. visitors in July 2009 . That seems like a large number – … Read More

LinkedIn by the Numbers – Searching by Title and Clearance

Ever wonder how many executives are on LinkedIn? How about accountants, software engineers, “Big 4” employees, or people with TS/SCI clearances?  Well I did. So I decided to run a number of searches for common titles in information technology, finance and accounting, recruiting and human resources, business development, social media, and administrative support and publish the results for the world to see.  I also … Read More

Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook June 2009 Traffic Data

I routinely check www.compete.com for the latest traffic data for my favorite social media sites and was pleasantly surprised to find June’s data has been released. I will review the June traffic data for Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook (aka, the “Big Three”). Twitter Twitter experienced explosive growth from February 2009 to April 2009, going from 7.9M to 19.4M unique U.S. visitors before leveling … Read More

How to Use LinkedIn in Your Job Search

Eariler this month Harry Urschel brought a post of his to my attention where he showed job seekers that you don’t have to have a huge LinkedIn network to use LinkedIn effectively to find a job. I wholeheartedly concur. Not only do you not have to have a large network of connections on LinkedIn, there are MANY ways to leverage … Read More

LinkedIn Search: What it COULD and SHOULD be

Did you know that LinkedIn currently has the ability to deliver incredibly powerful search functionality to its users – WELL beyond what we all have access to now?  What am I talking about? I’m excited to tell you, but quite honestly, I actually can’t believe it’s taken me this long to put 2 and 2 together. Have you ever really watched the video clip … Read More

How to Search Across Multiple Countries on LinkedIn

I’ve recently received a few requests from my European readers (thank you!) to write about how to use LinkedIn to simultaneously search multiple countries to identify candidates. In this post I will do exactly that – show you how you can search for candidates across multiple countries in one search. Although I will be using European countries in the examples, the same techniques can … Read More

Is LinkedIn Becoming a Job Board?

Is LinkedIn a social networking site, a job board, or a little of both? Most people consider LinkedIn to be a social networking site, or more specifically a professional network service. LinkedIn describes itself as an “interconnected network of experienced professionals.” However, when I take a step back and take an objective view of LinkedIn, I see a great deal of “job … Read More

FREE LinkedIn Search: Internal vs. X-Ray

While there is a growing number of recruiting professionals and organizations who pay for premium access to LinkedIn, there is still a large number of people who leverage LinkedIn with a free or “Personal” account. If you’re on the fence about paying for increased access to LinkedIn, you’re reading the right post. I’m going to compare searching LinkedIn from the … Read More

LinkedIn: Private vs. Out of Network Results

LinkedIn: Private vs. Out of Network Results I recently wrote about how to leverage LinkedIn’s Advanced Search Operators and I commented on LinkedIn’s relatively new search interface. Aside from search options, one other somewhat new aspect of searching inside LinkedIn using their search interface is that you can now return some results that are outside of your network. These typically appear … Read More

LinkedIn’s Advanced Search Operators

IMPORTANT NOTE Although LinkedIn’s advanced operators ceased to work properly for a period of a few months earlier this year, I am very happy to report that they are working again. Once more you will be able to harness LinkedIn’s search fields by hand coding your search strings and bypassing the search interface/fields. LinkedIn’s Advanced Search Operators LinkedIn has made … Read More

Searching Facebook for Candidates

I recently received a request from a reader to come up with some example Boolean Strings for finding software engineers on Facebook who are from Top 10 schools (Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, CMU, etc) and live in the Silicon Valley. ***Quick disclaimer*** I am definitely not a Facebook sourcing guru – I don’t see it as a high yield source for … Read More

Targeting PAST experience on LinkedIn – can it be done?

I recently had a recruiter ask me if there were any way to be able to search LinkedIn for people who have worked at a specific company in the past, but who are NOT currently working for that company. I can see why some Sourcers and Recruiters would want to specifically target people who are not currently at a company, … Read More

Resumes are not dead!

With the buzz I continue to see and hear surrounding Twitter, social networks, Internet sourcing (blogs, articles, etc.) and such, it’s easy to look at resumes as dull, outdated, or at least “uncool” when it comes to sourcing and recruiting. I fear there are many people who get blinded by the “shiny object” factor of each and every “next new thing” that will … Read More